“The Lost Music of Canterbury: Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks” (5-CD Set)

The Lost Music of Canterbury: Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks

Anonymous (early 16th-c.): Missa sine nomine
Hugh Aston (c.1585-1558): Ave Maria dive matris Anne, Gaude virgo mater Christi, Ave Maria ancilla trinitatis
Robert Hunt (early 16th-c.): Stabat mater, Ave Maria mater dei
Robert Jones (fl. 1520-35): Magnificat, Missa Spes nostra
Nicholas Ludford (c.1490-1557): Missa Regnum mundi, Missa Inclinum cor meum, Ave cujus conceptio
John Mason (c.1480-1548): Quales sumus O miseri, Ave fuit prima salus, Ve nobis miseris
Richard Pygott (c.1485-1549): Salve Regina
Hugh Sturmy (fl. 1520): Exultet in hac die

Blue Heron / Scott Metcalfe, director
Street Date: October 5, 2018 | Total Time: 5 hours, 25 minutes (5 discs/38 tracks) | Catalog No.: BHCD1008

The 5-CD boxed set The Lost Music of Canterbury: Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks is the capstone of a landmark project of international musical significance which presents extraordinary music from the last generation of medieval Catholicism in England. Judged by this music, Catholic culture remained vital and confident during this turbulent period. The fifth disc earned Blue Heron a 2018 Gramophone Classical Music Award in the Early Music category, making it the first non-European ensemble to win. Fabrice Fitch called the disc “one of the discoveries of the year.”

The set comes with a single 84-page full-color booklet with essays by Nick Sandon and Scott Metcalfe, and the discs include mostly world-premiere recordings and features masses by Nicholas Ludford, antiphons by Hugh Aston and Richard Pygott, the complete surviving works of Robert Jones (an early 16th-century musician, not the lute-song composer of the Elizabethan era) and the gifted though previously completely unknown composers Hugh Sturmy and Robert Hunt, and all but one of the surviving works of John Mason. The missing tenor parts (and, where needed, the treble parts) have been supplied by Nick Sandon, who has dedicated much of his professional life to the Peterhouse partbooks, which were copied for Canterbury Cathedral in 1540 and are now named for the college currently housing them, Peterhouse Cambridge.

Available from Amazon (www.amazon.com/dp/B07FSJFHKW) or wherever you get your music.